As a protest group swelled beneath the directors’ box at the London Stadium while the game continued in the background, coins rained down on those inside the box, one striking Sullivan in the face and ricocheting from his glasses.

But there were no complaints about Sullivan and Gold being men. This was an outpouring of anger at how these two men were running the football club, but there were no chants about the useless males. Gender was seen as irrelevant.

Yet when women at a football clubs are targeted, the abuse is almost always related to their gender. There seem to be more stories about the sexual discrimination the few women who are brave enough to work in football have experienced than there are women working in football; a handful of executives, a few more in other positions, from the medical team to the officials.

Huge step

It is why Manchester United’s appointment of Collette Roche as chief operating officer – the highest-placed female executive the club have ever employed – is a huge step. This is a club where a little over two decades ago Sir Alex Ferguson responded to a female physiotherapist asking for work experience that “most of the players felt that football was very much a male sport and did not really like the thought of females being involved with the treatment of sports injuries within the training complex”.

When that letter surfaced in 2011, we were told that was a different time, but has football really moved on so drastically? Is it a welcoming place for female staff members?

It is safe to speculate that in the entire history of the game a male on a football pitch has never had chants of “Get your balls out for the lads!” hurled at them.

Yet the few women who dare to enter this harsh sexist environment constantly face sexually charged taunts about their body.

And virtually all of those in high-powered executive roles, as Roche will take up, have experienced sexism in some way.

‘Lucky to have us’

When Carolyn Radford, Mansfield Town’s chief executive, was appointed in 2011 she was subjected to sexist taunts from the stands and in online supporter forums. Her employment was branded a publicity stunt. People commented on her blond hair and called her a bimbo. She was asked in a press conference if she had been an escort at university. Radford is a trained lawyer with a degree from Durham, one of the top universities in the country. If she had known she was to receive such abuse, she says she would not have taken the position.

West Ham’s Karren Brady has experienced sexism during her long career as an executive in the game, becoming a managing director at Birmingham in 1993, at only 23. Even as recently as 2015 former West Ham and Blackburn Rovers striker Benni McCarthy said that women and football is “not such a good combination”, in comments thought to have been aimed at Brady.

“McCarthy was the striker we sacked because he was overweight and never scored for us,” Brady responded.

“He now says women and football do not mix. However, women’s football is improving quickly and off the field a growing number are excellent executives. My view is that football is lucky to have us.”

Long history of sexism

Football agent Carly Barnes, an Oxbridge graduate, has been asked “Can I have two sugars in my tea?” when she has walked into a boardroom with a chief executive and the owner of a football club to negotiate about a player.

Katrien Meire, formerly chief executive at Charlton Athletic but now at Sheffield Wednesday, has had club chairmen in boardrooms on away days come to her table and start talking to the man in the suit representing one of the sponsors because they think he’s the chief executive, not her.

And the stories continue from those involved outside of the boardroom. When Sian Massey-Ellis was assistant referee in the Premier League, Andy Gray and Richard Keys infamously said: “Someone needs to go down there and explain the offside rule to her.”

Former Chelsea first-team doctor Eva Carneiro was subjected to abhorrent sexist chants from rival fans, once at Old Trafford, before Jose Mourinho demoted her for doing her job properly.

United, Manchester City and Arsenal all pay their average female staff members more than the average male. They are in the minority, although this is no different to what is being reflected at companies across the country as gender pay gaps are revealed everywhere.

What’s more concerning for football is that there isn’t so much a gender gap, as more of a big, gaping hole where all the women are supposed to be.

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